Google News to host more news agency content with ads alongside

Posted by Emma Heald on March 17, 2009 at 9:14 AM

Google News announced that it has struck a deal with eight European news agencies to host their content and to display advertisements around their stories. The ads will also run alongside content from the agencies whose content Google already hosts: AP, the AFP, the UK Press Association and Canada Press. Google started to display ads next to search results on Google News US in late February, but it was unclear if the move would spread to outside the US. The ads will be contextually relevant, as they are on Google news US.

News agencies EFE, which services Spain and Latin America, LUSA (Portugal and Brazil), Keystone (Switzerland), APA (Austria), PAP (Poland), MTI (Hungary), ANA (Greece) and Belga (Belgium) have all struck news content hosting deals with Google. They are all members of the European Press agency.

The other wire services mentioned above came to agreements over the last few years (in some cases prompted by a lawsuit) whereby Google licensed the news agencies' content and is allowed to use it in different ways, including keeping articles on its own site. As news wires do not have a consumer website for their content, Google cannot drive traffic to their sites as it can to newspaper websites, so without licensing there is little advantage to them having their content available on Google News.

Using 'duplication detection' software, Google tries to eliminate the appearance of multiple identical newswire stories hosted by different newspapers in News searches, and business product manager Josh Cohen claimed that the move was intended to highlight the contributions of more newswire journalists.

Google would not reveal the details of the revenue deal it had struck with its partners, reported the Guardian. The search engine has faced considerable criticism from publishers about what is seen as making money out of other people's content, and the decision to start using advertising on Google News has revived that debate. As news agencies are being paid a revenue share which presumably they have agreed as fair, this is unlikely to generate too much controversy, but an attempt to place more advertising anywhere else on Google News would risk a backlash from publishers.

Source: Guardian